Questions
by blueandblack
Summary: Written for anythingbutgrey's 'Doomed Ship Ficathon' on LJ. The prompt was 'The pitfalls of fame.'


"What's the worst part then?" Hermione asked, quill hovering, like she was about to take notes.

Viktor smiled. "The questions," he replied.

"Oh!" Hermione looked down with a quick grin, a subtle blush. "Sorry," she said, then "I suppose I ask an awful lot of them, don't I?"

Viktor's eyebrows raised slowly.

Hermione smiled, shook her head, said "Sorry," again, thought _Well fair's fair. We both know you'd just sit here staring at me if I didn't._

She was right - of course she was. And Viktor proved it so when he said nothing and watched her in the silence.

Hermione had enormous difficulty keeping her mouth shut, poked at her neat piles of parchment, opened and closed her books, copied out miscellaneous sentences - all to keep busy.

Finally he seemed to take pity on her - or perhaps he really had needed all that time to think of what to say. He cleared his throat and Hermione suppressed a smile.

"I like the Herm-own-ninny questions," he said. "But I do not like the in..." He hesitated, tried again. "The inver, inser, versoo..." He shook his head. "The newspapers. The newspapers questions I do not like."

"Oh _interviews,_" Hermione said. "Yes, I've heard those can be quite stressful."

She rolled her eyes, thought of Rita Skeeter and her wretched Quick-Notes Quill, dropped the quill she was holding, because it really was the wrong prop for this conversation.

She sat back in her chair, tucked her feet underneath her, her shoes forgotten under the desk.

"I sometimes do not know vot it is meaning ven they are asking me," Viktor said. "I sometimes do not know to say vot I am meaning."

Hermione frowned. "Oh," she said, and "Yes," in what she hoped was a comforting voice. "Don't they have interpreters though? They really ought to – I'm pretty sure Muggle sporting personalities get interpreters if they're not comfortable with English. Honestly, the wizarding world really is behind in some areas, isn't it? It's a disgrace, if you ask me."

Viktor had been squinting as she spoke, like he was concentrating very hard. When she was finished he shook his head. "I sometimes do not like even in my home Bulgaria."

"Oh?"

Viktor grimaced. "They vant me to be writing. For sports journal."

"Oh?" Hermione said again, leaning forward encouragingly. "Well that must be interesting. I suppose you write about strategy? Dissect your wins and losses? That's the sort of thing Ron would kill to read." She smirked to herself. "Too bad he's so very monolingual."

Viktor looked down at the table, frowned even though he didn't mean to. He really hadn't gotten much of that except the mention of Ron's name and the smirk just after it that had looked more like a smile to him.

"I do not write," he said after a moment, and as he did he reached out and nudged one of Hermione's books aimlessly along the table. "They vant... but I do not write good. I can not…" He made a low, frustrated sound and abandoned that sentence. "And then they ask questions - newspapers questions."

Hermione shifted in her seat, peered at him, thought for a long time. "Viktor, did you..." she asked finally, hesitantly, "did you not go to school?"

Viktor looked up from his book-boat. "Yes I go to school!" he exclaimed indignantly. "I go to Durmstrang School, greatest school in all East Europe."

Hermione smiled anxiously, shook her head. "No, no, I mean Muggle school. When you were a child? Did you not..."

Viktor looked down again, quite unabashedly miserably this time. "They ask that. They say my mother and father are the gypsies."

"Oh," Hermione said gently. She leaned forward and placed her hand on his, immediately wished she hadn't, because it seemed in hindsight like it might have been a patronizing gesture.

Viktor didn't seem to mind.

He looked down at her hand on his, and slowly, slowly, turned his around so they were palm to palm.

Hermione swallowed. Something inside her kept telling her to yank her hand back, but she felt as though she couldn't move any part of her body, and very quickly it was too late to try.

His fingers curled around hers. Hers curled back.

Viktor looked up, met her gaze, smiled easily. "It is true," he said. "They are the gypsies. But they are honest - my mother and father - they are not..." He struggled for words. "They are not stealing and lying. But then I do not read good. And so I do not know vat it is they are writing - these things, I think - stealing and lying - these things that are not true."

"Oh," Hermione whispered, "Yes." She squeezed his hand, wriggled her legs out from underneath her and leaned over the corner of the table towards him. "That must be awful."

Viktor's eyes did not leave hers, and she found she could not look away, even though she was growing more and more nervous by the second.

When he said "Do not leave me," Hermione blanched.

Her chest seemed to crackle and fizz like ice under hot water, and she tried to smile, tried to laugh, tried not to flinch when his free hand reached up to her cheek.

"You're the one who'll be leaving Viktor," she said very quickly, and she had to look down as she did, she had to press her lips together because she was very worried about the shapes they were making.

Viktor shook his head; she caught a blur of it through her lashes.

"No," he said, and Hermione was utterly terrified when he lifted the hand he was still holding and pressed it to his chest, when he slid to his knees before her.

"I am meaning do not forget me please Herm-own-ninny," he said, and his voice was so thick, his tone so unguardedly sorrowful, that when Hermione's eyes found his she was fighting a sudden urge to cry.

"Oh I shan't," she said earnestly. "I shan't, Viktor."

He had absolutely no idea what that meant, but he found he was comforted by the fact that she had said it twice and with such conviction and with his name at the end of it.

That was why he rose up and kissed her.

It was slow - lingering - but very chaste.

Hermione's face was burning when he sat down in his chair again.

"Alright," she said quietly. "We have twelve weeks."

She swallowed, glanced over at him with a small smile, pulled out a spare quill and proffered it to him.

His brow furrowed. She tried to shrug.

"If we're not going to forget each other... I'm going to have to teach you about letters."

Viktor unfurrowed, tentatively, smiled, more tentatively still.

He took the quill and pulled his chair around next to hers.


End file.
